Applying for Common Professional Examination exemption

January 2019

Criteria

This is an application for full exemption from the requirement to complete the Common Professional Examination (CPE). If you wish to apply for partial exemption, you must do so when applying to your CPE provider to enrol on their course.

You need to demonstrate the seven Foundations of Legal Knowledge. These are:

Criminal Law

Equity and Trusts

Law of the European Union

Obligations 1 (Contract)

Obligations 2 (Tort)

Property/Land Law

Public Law (Constitutional Law, Administrative Law and Human Rights Law).

In addition, you must demonstrate one additional substantive area of law. You must demonstrate all the above by certificated learning and/or work-based learning1.

Important information

For certificated learning, we will only recognise academic credit that has led to a qualification or a certificate. Examinations on each topic must have been passed at 40 percent or above. You need to provide certified copies of your qualification or certificates, transcripts and module descriptors.

If you are claiming an exemption based on an award obtained outside of the UK, the awarding body must be recognised by UK NARIC.

For work-based learning, your evidence will need to confirm the work carried out, how it meets all the CPE requirements and must be corroborated by your employer.

Guidance for referees

You must ensure that your referee(s) have read this information.

References must:

be provided for each period of experience claimed

be written for the purpose of this application and be dated within the last three months

be submitted on letter headed paper.

Referees must:

have supervised you directly as a general employment reference is not enough

read your application, reviewed all supporting evidence before corroborating your experience and confirm that they have done so in their reference

familiarised themselves with the CPE course content and refer directly to this when providing their reference(s)

include examples from their direct observation of your work.

If your supervisors are not solicitors, ask them for a statement outlining their skills, experience and qualifications. These must be relevant to supervising your legal work. They may also wish to comment on how familiar they are with the CPE course content.

You must redact all samples of your work to remove sensitive or identifying information. We will not accept non-redacted documents and will destroy them.

Making your application

The application fee is £55.

We aim to provide you with a decision within 90 days of receiving your application.